We lost an eloquent, courageous friend when Jane Rule died Nov 27 on Galiano Island, British Columbia surrounded by friends and family; she was 76. American by birth and Canadian by choice, Rule's pioneering work as a writer and activist reached across borders.

Born in New Jersey on Mar 28, 1931 Jane Vance Rule spent her childhood moving from place to place in the US before settling in the San Francisco Bay area. After she graduated from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1952 she spent a year in London, UK. She returned to the US to study briefly in a writing program at Stanford before accepting a teaching position at Concord Academy in Massachusetts. There she met Helen Sonthoff, another teacher, who would become her lifelong partner. Worried about McCarthyism and the political climate in the US, Rule travelled to Vancouver in 1956; in October she sent a postcard to a friend saying, "This is a beautiful, beautiful world... to see, to live in, to work in." Sonthoff joined her a few weeks later. Eventually they both held positions at the University of British Columbia until 1976 when they moved to Galiano Island.

Rule moved to Vancouver to give herself space and time to write. In 1961 she completed Desert of the Heart, her first published novel, though it took three years and 22 rejections before seeing print. Desert of the Heart tells the story of a gentle romance between a young woman who works at a casino in Reno and an older woman who has come for a divorce. Moving back and forth between the two characters, Rule subtly challenges the myths about lesbians that prevailed in mid-20th century America and creates a story that is hopeful, loving and open-ended. From the beginning readers found in Rule's writing a landscape in which to reimagine themselves, their loves and their relation to the world. It is difficult to imagine in 2007 that Desert of the Heart was unique when it was published: unapologetic, the novel dared to imagine that women could desire and love one another and that they could live creative, engaged lives. The novel reminded readers that lesbians were vulnerable to surveillance and punishment, but it provided a place to stand, to resist and to imagine a full life in spite of the obstacles. Rule established herself as a clear-eyed visionary; without being didactic, the novel is deeply political.

Lesbian readers discovered themselves in her fiction. Rule's characters and her own presence as a sympathetic writer created a virtual community of readers. For example one woman wrote to Rule to say she had devoured her novels after reading other lesbian themed books. "Seeking words, images that validate, acknowledge our lives, our reality, in place of mainstream culture which wills us with silence, or simply maims with distortions... the really good stuff is rare," she wrote. "Your writing is rare.... You acknowledge the contradictions that are our lives. I feel validated by your writing and empowered by it. As well as just happy by it. It makes for good company. Your characters are people who I recognize quite easily — complex, scarred, courageous, funny, inadequate, but trying."

By imagining Desert through two main characters Rule demonstrated that we fashion our best selves in relation to each other. Only one of her seven published novels, This Is Not for You from 1970 is told from a single point of view. Imprisoned in shame and self-loathing, the main character embodies the devastation brought about by the fear and hatred of gay men and lesbians in the US in 1950s white, middle-class culture. Rule also exposes the deep connections between racism and homophobia, self-loathing and cruelty to others.

Her other novels followed the landscapes (both geographical and human) Rule inhabited in the 1970s and '80s: from an unnamed west coast city in Against the Season (1971) to Vancouver in Contract with the World (1980), The Young in One Another's Arms (1984) and Memory Board (1987) and Galiano Island in After the Fire (1987). All of these novels stage communities, large and small, as the main protagonist. Some of the communities are unconventional families, such as boarders in a rooming house or other chance collections of people notable for their differences rather than their resemblances. Rule also explores growing up and growing old in Contract with the World, Memory Board and After the Fire. In all of her fiction lesbians and gay men share space (comfortably or not) with other men and women and with children.

Rule also wrote many short stories for both mainstream women's magazines like Redbook and Chatelaine, and for the pioneering lesbian journal The Ladder beginning in the 1960s. The stories in the women's magazines subtly subvert gender and sexual norms and the stories in The Ladder often show the ways that a vulnerable community risks regulating its own. Never comfortable with the idea of a gay ghetto Rule valued community above all, but community defined by difference rather than commonality.

And yet Rule became one of the clearest, most incisive and uncompromising voices for the lesbian and gay community. Many of her essays grew out of her column "So's your Grandmother" in the landmark Toronto gay liberationist newspaper The Body Politic (Xtra's predecessor). Characteristically her column began as a gesture of support for the paper after its offices were raided in December 1977 by Operation P, a special Toronto police unit on pornography, who charged that "Men Loving Boys Loving Men," the last in a series on essays on youth sex and intergenerational relationships, was "immoral, indecent and scurrilous."

Rule, a lifelong opponent of censorship, wrote a bold column that condemned the police action and engaged the central issues of the offending article. In the column, called "Teaching Sexuality," Rule acknowledged that the controversy raised difficult questions for her. "On the one hand I deplore repressive police action designed not only to stifle any discussion of... sexual activity across generations but to intimidate anyone even so involved with the paper as to be a subscriber," she wrote. "On the other hand I understand the rage against sexual exploitation by men not only of children of both sexes but of women and other men, the pleasures of which The Body Politic can sometimes be accused of advertising."

The real target of her essay was the hypocrisy of a society that is so fearful of sexual initiation that we deny that childhood sexuality exists. The taboo against sexual behaviour between children and adults, she argues, facilitates the exploitation of children. "Children are sexual," she concluded, "and it is up to us to take responsibility for their real education. They have been exploited and betrayed long enough by our silence." Her argument, bold in 2007, was unprecedented in 1978.

Rule thought initially that she'd write a handful of columns for The Body Politic, to support it until its legal problems were resolved. She ended up contributing many essays and reviews for the nearly 10 years that the newspaper continued to publish. Her editor at the paper, Rick Bébout, became a close and trusted friend. They exchanged letters monthly even after the paper folded and right up to her death; the correspondence is a precious archive not only of a movement but of a moving friendship.

In recent years Rule and Bébout have challenged the wholesale support of same sex marriage that has taken over political efforts on both sides of the border. Wary of government intrusion in private lives, they have complicated our thinking about marriage, arguing that domestic arrangements and personal lives are more varied and vital than the straight model of monogamous coupling sanctioned by the state for which we seem to be fighting.

In her writing Rule refused to privilege long-term relationships over other forms of intimacy. Yet her 45-year relationship with Sonthoff sustained and nurtured both of them as it did their many friends and neighbours on Galiano and throughout the world. The couple enjoyed a well-earned reputation as generous, attentive hosts. The ferry to Galiano Island took a steady stream of friends and relatives to their home, located in an Emily Carr landscape of fir trees and red-barked arbutus. I first met Jane in person in the summer of 1992 after we had corresponded about her work. My partner and I were planning a trip to BC and I wrote to ask Jane and Helen to join us for dinner in Vancouver. Instead, they invited us to spend a weekend at their home.

The closer we got to the island, the more apprehensive we became. How much of Jane's life entered her fiction directly? Would Helen turn out to be the model for Constance in Memory Board, lovable but without any short-term memory? I kept looking at a picture of Jane on the back of Contract with the World, taken when she was the age I was that summer. What would she look like now, 12 years my senior but suffering from arthritis of the lower spine that sometimes nearly crippled her? What a risk they had taken, we thought, to invite us in as houseguests for several days rather than take the ferry ride themselves to the city. Or simply to decline an invitation from strangers. Later, when we confessed these apprehensions over one of many glasses of scotch, Helen said (in full command of her short-term memory), "It's difficult for Jane to travel because of her arthritis and we've found through experience that you can put up with almost anyone for two days." A welcome and a warning that made us all laugh.

After Helen's death in 2000, Jane wrote a painfully beautiful meditation on grief that appeared in Go Big, another publication (now defunct) from Pink Triangle Press (publisher of both The Body Politic and Xtra). "Learning to survive is, at first, simply a series of distractions which begin with a love/hate relationship with everything Helen loved, from daffodils to children's laughter, from Christmas to lima beans. I don't now try to make sense of that loss. I learn to make use of it instead. The house I prepared for Helen's broken hip, to which she never returned, now shelters a friend badly hurt in a car accident, a friend about whom Helen used to say, 'Just seeing her face makes me feel better.' It does me, too.

"Risk, grow, grieve," Rule continued. "Helen's like will not walk this earth again, nor I love like that again, but the care I learned is useful still for all she and I learned to love together."

In her early career Jane Rule provided a lifeline for lesbians who were isolated, crushed by the hostility and fears of the 1950s and '60s. For nearly half a century, her voice has been a sane, unafraid presence in the midst of the successes and losses we have shared whether "we" are gay or straight, young or old, urban or rural.

In the last several years small, independent presses like Insomniac Press in Toronto, Little Sister's and Arsenal Pulp in Vancouver have begun to reissue her fiction because it continues to speak to us today. Rule's last project was a small book of new essays for Hedgerow Press, a small quality press on Vancouver Island, scheduled for a spring or fall release in 2008.

In her last public appearance Rule was inducted into the Order of Canada by BC Lieutenant Governor Iona Campagnolo in a simple ceremony on Galiano Island followed by a potluck picnic in July 2007. Honoured by the country she adopted, Rule wanted the celebration in the close island community that she loved so well.

In January 1995 the documentary film Fictions and Other Truths: a Film about Jane Rule made by Lynne Fernie, Aerlyn Weissman and Rina Fraticelli premiered in Toronto. Rule was unable to attend because of ill health but she watched a tape in her home as the film was being screened in Toronto. Afterward she wrote, "As I watched the film, I thought, 'And this is about community, too.' It will make money for the [Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives] in Toronto and there is now talk of a Vancouver fundraiser in March for the Little Sister's Defence Fund. But it has also made a community of all of us involved in making it, across borders and continents, across years, affirming what we know about the value of the work we all do together, insisting on doing our own defining of the public space."

Privately and together we grieve the loss of our friend who helped us know that clarity and candour are far more important than uncritical sentimentality to build and nurture our communities. Her like will not walk this earth again, but we will all continue to learn from her courage and her eloquence.

Marilyn Schuster is a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and author of Passionate Communities: Reading Lesbian Resistance in Jane Rule's Fiction.

Comments

I first met Jane in the early 1980s, when her parents lived next door to one of my friends in Channing House, an assisted-living facility for elders in Palo Alto, Calif. She soon accepted an invitation to give an informal talk for the gay student group at nearby Stanford University, where I was a graduate student at the time. Jane struck me as a model of both deep humanity and clear thinking, as one of her comments after the talk demonstrated. An 18-year-old freshman introduced himself and mentioned his boyfriend. Jane asked how long they had been together, and the young man replied "Six weeks." Jane smiled warmly and remarked without the slightest hint of irony, "Ah, a long-term relationship!" She knew that for a brave 18-year-old gay boy, six weeks genuinely felt like -- indeed, genuinely was -- a long-term relationship. And she both recognized and honored his experience by speaking a few plain and generous words. That same spirit informs her fiction. We'll miss you, Jane!

I just learned of Jane's death through hearing an excerpted interview on Fresh Air/NPR interview show. I immediately sought out this kind of forum because more than almost any other Lesbian writer of our time, she impacted me in my and my generation (70's) coming out process.... I am sorrowful to learn that her passing was marred by the pain of liver cancer but know that her spirit and writings will be a constant source of inspiration for younger dykes and us aging ones..makes me want to get out Desert of the Heart and dive into it immediately...good journey, Jane. Thanks all for the remembrances

Though not fortunate enough to have met Jane Rule, I am lucky to have been blessed by her insightful and brilliant fiction writing. I was sad to learn of her passing but will try to learn from her own true words about grief and its mysterious processes in our lives. Thank you Jane Rule for all of your blessings to all of us.

Jane Rule's novels and essays affirmed, encouraged, and inspired me as a young person emerging--first with fear, later with unapologetic pride--into queer culture. Hard to believe that was 25 years ago. What a gift and blessing to have had the opportunity to spend a full day with her at her home on Galiano Island, a few years ago, talking about her writing, love and relationships, and how much the world has changed. I will cherish that memory, the few letters we exchanged together, and the autographed 1st edition of Desert of the Heart. Melissa Davis, Vancouver, BC

Thank you.
Thank you for writing about love.
Honestly, unflinching and with a sly wit.
The words in your books gave me dreams.
The dreams have now become and are still becoming.
Thank you for being yourself and not some clay footed idol
Many the universes enfold you into infinity and your words remembered in our hearts.

Jane and Helen adopted me, my then partner Cherie Geauvreau, and our kids, Sarah and Meghann, like the strays we were, and nurtured us all through the 80s. When the girls had no other family to rely on, Jane and Helen took on the grandmothering. We'd make the trek from Saltspring Island to Galiano where the kids would ride ponies and swim and play with Jane's pop-up books and wind-up toys and I would settle in for a smoke and a writing chat with Jane, or a wide-ranging talk with Helen. Can't remember how many times we packed up and went on over. Meg learned to swim in that pool; I ate the only hotdog I've ever eaten in that kitchen, because how could you say no thanks to anything they prepared? I learned how to fight back under Jane's tutelage, and if we were later on different sides of one coin re: ssm, we were always proud of each other for standing up.

Thanks, Helen, thanks, Jane, for the comraderie, the gossip, the mentoring, the stockings full of treasures at Christmas, the small cheques, your sane little hideout in the woods, your books, especially Memory Board, your blurb on one of my books, your steadfastness, your opinions, your adivice, the stick-it notes on Helen's cig packs, the daffodils, the mothering, the grandmothering. Just...thanks.

The sentence I wrote: "One could not appreciate Jane and what she did in her life if one knows the first thing about either" -- should of course have been written "One could ONLY appreciate...". Sorry for the mistake; in haste I did not re-read my own words.

Jane was everything a writer should be, and beyond her intelligence and communicating skills she showed us (queer people in particular) how to live. When just surviving is often difficult enough, to be gently but firmly led by the hand through the rocky terrain with a caring and shrewdly perceptive guide, is immeasurably useful and ultimately loving. One could not appreciate Jane and what she did in her life if one knows the first thing about either. I will always treasure our past correspondence, but more importantly I honour and feel blessed by her immense legacy. Jane, we thank you, and hope your spirit lives on in the words you left behind. And not just your work, but you yourself mattered, so so much.

One of the thing that will be happening at the memorial on Galiano Island is a toast to Jane. I have been in touch with many people, nationally and internationally, who would love to be part of the toast but will not be able to come to the island so it was suggested that we let everyone know the exact time of the toast so all could participate. So that is what will happen.
The toast to Jane Rule will be Sunday December 9th and 1:00 pm pacific standard time. Get you friends together and raise a glass to Jane.

Please pass this on to everyone you know who would be interested in honouring Jane. We only have a few days to get the word out!!

I am deeply saddened to learn of the passing of my dear friend and a key Canadian lesbian literary icon, Jane Rule, member of the Order of Canada, who was most influential, generous, and encouraging to me in my writing and advocacy for same-sex rights.

I will treasure the letters we shared and her apt and arch comments on my poetry and writing, but most of all, her forwarding to me her own late mother's copy of Rule's (now out of print) book, Lesbian Images, a rare, wonderful and encouraging study of lesbians in literary history, which I read clandestinely in the Hamilton Public Library when I first came out in high school in the late 1970s.

I'm sure Jane Rule would want to be remembered through acts of kindness, sharing, wit, beauty, courage and passion, in celebration of our lives and loves, but also and always by the cultivation of the individual conscience 'against the world' and the forces that would tend to make us complacent or humourless. Rest in peace, Jane. Long may you wave!